Sunday, January 11, 2009

Saturday morning the kids had their first real ski race! It was an "in-house" race and they call it the Nations Cup. Sky is on the Dream Team (the littlest racers), so they were all racing as Team Canada. Sara raced for Team Italy and apparently will race for Italy the rest of the year. (We had to do a quick study on the country of Italy for school last week!) Poor Sara was so nervous. I could tell because she kept saying she didn't want anyone to cheer for her, and her hands were cold while I was dressing her, she was cranky, and she just couldn't think straight at all. Afterwards, she finally admitted to being nervous. Sky was just plain pumped to be in a real race! They each had two runs. Here are a few pictures of the big event.

Sky (in the orange jacket), listening to his coach explain the race.

Sara (#48), doing warm-ups with her class. Notice the pink skis and pink helmet! She would have pink boots if they were available!Team Canada was the first team down the hill. Sky missed a couple of gates on the first run, but made them all on the second run! The little racers were so cute and sometimes just downright funny!All that racing makes a little boy very thirsty!Here comes Sara! She had some confusion with the gates at the top of the hill, but got it worked out. Then, she kind of stopped before the finish line and they had to wave her across the finish line so the clock would stop! By the second run she had it all figured out, with a time improvement of 20 seconds!

All the way! Yay, Sara!

Finally smiling after the first run! She was definitely relieved to have that over with!Sky, showing off his Kinder Surprise chocolate egg! All of Team Canada got a prize for racing. Team France was the winning team for the older kids, so only they got a prize. Sara was pretty disappointed. I was surprised that they didn't have second and third prizes.The weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday! We've had 6 or 7 weeks of extremely cold, even dangerously cold, temperatures. But, for one day (and one day only), it warmed up so that we could actually enjoy ourselves! It went up to +3 C (about 37 F) and we were so excited! It felt almost balmy outside. It was wonderful not to worry about little hands and feet getting too cold or the danger of frostbite on cheeks and noses. It was a great morning and we were very proud of our little racers! Next Nations Cup is in 2 weeks - they're gonna be flyin' down that hill!